


love’s perfect ache

by babzilla



Series: Fox Fucks February Fridays [3]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Explicit Sexual Content, First Kiss, Fox Fucks February Fridays (Star Wars), Frottage, M/M, Massage, No men we die like beta, Pining, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Requited Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-20
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-15 20:55:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29565030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babzilla/pseuds/babzilla
Summary: It’s not so much that Thorn is always cleaning up Fox’s messes—because Fox doesn’t make messes—but sometimes there’s only one person who can smooth Fox’s ruffled feathers, and that’s Thorn.It doesn’t make him a doormat. Itdoesn’t.-Applying more oil directly to Fox’s back, Thorn is distracted for a second by the way the golden oil drips down the slope of Fox’s shoulder blades, pooling in the small of his back. It must be the height of irony, he thinks, for him and his massive crush on Fox to constantly wind up in this position, at a time when he’s least able to enjoy it.Fuck his life, really.
Relationships: CC-1010 | Fox/Clone Commander Thorn
Series: Fox Fucks February Fridays [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2144691
Comments: 13
Kudos: 58
Collections: Commander Fox





	love’s perfect ache

**Author's Note:**

> Let the clones say fuck.
> 
> Warnings: attempt at a kinda? erotic massage?? Nothing else that I can think of— let me know if something should be added!

It becomes immediately clear that the situation on Coruscant has taken a turn when Thorn finally makes it back to HQ after his latest mission with the Diplomatic Corps and finds everyone shut up tight inside their armour— no bare faces in sight. It’s like walking into a ghost town, except instead of empty halls and offices, it’s full of troopers determined to do their work as silently as possible without looking him in the eye.

The Coruscant Guard is running like a well-oiled machine. An utterly silent, terrifyingly competent, incredibly tense, machine.

He has to corner a shiny in the fresher just to get some intel on what the hell is going on— very reluctantly getting vague details of some blow-up after an impromptu parade where  _ something _ had gone wrong. Now Stone’s locked up inside his office and sending out new training manoeuvres daily, Rhys has retreated to one of their outposts on the other side of the planet to conduct a heretofore unheard of ‘inspection’, and Thire had blocked his name in for the Temple Liaison position for the next three months and was holed up in the Temple with the Jedi— ignoring any messages that pointed out exactly how this was against regs.

There is no word on Fox. And at that point Thorn doesn’t need the shiny’s stuttering assessment of events, letting the poor trooper go as he double-times it back to his office and pulls up the duty roster for the past month on his computer. The words on screen are as he expected, so he doesn’t draw attention to himself by cursing up a storm, but he’s more forceful than necessary as he uses his override codes as Head of the Diplomatic Corps to tap out and approve a set of reassignments, to be put into effect immediately.

Then he logs out, locks up his office, and calmly makes his way back to the barracks while activating the location ping on his armour.

He’s timed it all perfectly because Fox doesn’t blow into his room like a mad bantha until after he’s stripped out of his hard shell.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing—” Fox starts, all piss and vinegar before Thorn cuts him off.

“Shut up,” he says, pointing a finger in Fox’s face and stopping him in his tracks. He points to the en suite ‘fresher.

“Shower. Water ration— use it.”

Fox only splutters, hands curling into fists as if he’s getting ready to go into a real snit but Thorn just shakes his head, marching up to his fellow Commander and pushing him toward the ‘fresher.

“Now.”

Fox is too exhausted to put up much of a fight, and Thorn manages to lock him in the ‘fresher without too much trouble. The other Commander curses at him as he bangs on the door a few times before giving in, the shower coming on shortly after. Thorn ignores it all, adjusting the height of his bed and turning up the central heating before digging around in his room and uncovering all his various items of contraband. He layers his bed with soft blankets and extra pillows, lighting exotic candles and incense—souvenirs from his missions—and finally takes out two very special bottles. 

After arranging everything to his liking, he sets the two bottles in pride of place beside the bed— the larger being a very nice bottle of Corellian brandy with a single glass, and the smaller, more delicate bottle of Chalactan spiced honey oil sitting beside it. 

Listening as Fox actually takes his time in the shower—his attitude quickly dissipating when forced to indulge in some creature comforts—he pours himself a glass of the brandy, settling down on the bed to wait.

It wouldn’t be the first time he’s had to do this for Fox— granted the Commander hadn't needed to be snapped out of one of his neurotic fits since around eight months into their original deployment to Coruscant, but the motions are familiar.

It all comes down to Fox and his terrible habit of believing the weight of the entire Capitol is on his shoulders, getting stuck in a repetitive pattern with his thinking, and then driving himself and everyone around him to the brink of a nervous breakdown until he’s brought back down to baseline with a firm hand. Rhys says it’s arrogance; any one of them could have been assigned the rank of Marshal Commander— Fox is the only one that seems to think it matters beyond some words recorded on the GAR registries. 

But Thorn knows that’s not it. 

Fox’s flaws don’t stem from any sense of exceptionalism on his part, but an excess of guilt— an overdeveloped sense of responsibility. He has a hard time delegating because he thinks he’s failing in his duties if he’s not good enough to handle everything that lands in his lap, not because he thinks the other Commanders  _ can’t _ pick up his slack; he’s hard on the rank and file when training manoeuvres go to shit because he’s determined to get his troops through the war in one piece and any failures in training only mean that he failed in guiding them, and not because he thinks the standard CTs are incompetent.

It all adds up, especially when Fox keeps his troubles to himself; believing that the burden of leadership means he has to endure it all alone. He won’t seek comfort from anyone, despite how often Thorn’s helped him to relax in the past— whether by sitting patiently and listening to his petty complaints until the frenetic energy gas drained out of him, or resorting to more drastic measures like this.

That’s a particular sticking point for Thorn— as Fox’s reluctance to indulge in a helping hand from a fellow Commander (so to speak) means that the only bit of intimacy he ever takes for himself is with Thorn. This is both a good thing—as Thorn never has to worry about developing any jealousies or fighting for attention when it comes to Fox—and a bad thing—as Fox’s reluctance to get close to anyone means that the only time he’ll let Thorn close is when he’s all but falling apart.

And maybe it makes him a doormat, but Thorn’s never thought it a particularly good move to bring up his own feelings for Fox while his friend is in crisis.

Which means he’s back in  _ this _ position, he thinks bleakly, draining his glass and pouring another as Fox finally makes his way out of the ‘fresher, hair and body already towelled dry.

His dark circles look permanent as he regards Thorn tiredly from the doorway, clutching a perfunctory towel around his waist, the slope of his shoulders defeated and heavy.

“Here, have a drink,” Thorn beckons, tilting his head as he stands and lets Fox take his place on the bed, passing over the glass of Corellian brandy.

Thorn is silent as he pulls off the stopper on the bottle of Chalactan oil, pouring a small amount on his palm before rubbing his hands together to warm it up. Fox is staring at the wall when he turns back to his fellow Commander, eyes blank and exhaustion visible in every line of his body as he slowly sips at the brandy in his hands.

“Hey, come on— deep breaths,” Thorn says, stepping between Fox’s knees and tapping at his chin to make him look up.

They go through the motions of taking several deep breaths together, the soothing scent of the floral candles and woody incense intermingling in the air, before Thorn smooths his hands over Fox’s face in a first pass, lightly coating his skin in the thin oil from brow to neck.

Cupping Fox’s cheeks, Thorn reluctantly ignores the hollowness he can feel beneath his hands and applies gentle pressure with his thumbs. He rubs up the sides of Fox’s nose to the hollows of his brows and up the centre of his forehead, smoothing out the tension and frown lines. He repeats the action, alternating the pattern by pulling his thumbs along the underside of Fox’s brows to the edge of his face, until he can feel Fox finally relax beneath his hands.

Running his hands across Fox’s cheeks and down to his neck again, Thorn lets him take another sip of brandy before returning to Fox’s face, determined to help him loosen up the tight tension in his body. Following the worrying dark circles underneath Fox’s eyes, Thorn traces his thumbs over the top of his cheekbones and works his way down, rubbing the oil in small, upward circles over Fox’s cheeks and across his jaw before stroking firmly over his upper lip and down his chin. 

Fox is silent through all of it, avoiding his eyes and sipping slowly at his glass whenever Thorn’s hands aren’t in his way, and there’s a dull ache in his chest to see Fox listless and numb like this. 

He doesn’t let it affect his work— applying firmer pressure underneath Fox’s jaw, his thumbs moving down the column of his throat before moving back up as he works the rest of his fingers at the back of Fox’s neck. The Marshal Commander releases a low groan as he slowly tilts his head back and forth, following the pressure from Thorn’s hands, but Thorn doesn’t let up until Fox’s tense shoulders finally go limp.

“Want to talk about it?” he asks, taking the empty glass from Fox’s hands after he drains it with one final gulp.

Fox grimaces instead of answering, loosening the towel from around his waist and tossing it aside before lowering himself to lay on his front on Thorn’s bed.

Thorn waits, pouring more oil into his palm while Fox gets comfortable. He’ll get an answer eventually; however fond Fox may be of pretending that he’s an island, he’s shown again and again that he  _ does _ need to talk about his feelings eventually. Usually, Thorn’s around to corner him in one of their offices with the contraband Corellian brandy and an open ear before it gets so bad that Fox’s body has to be brought to gentle submission so that his brain also relaxes. But after almost two years of war, their schedules are getting harder and harder to coordinate.

However much he wants to help Fox, nobody has ever managed to make him talk when he didn’t want to, so Thorn focuses on his task. He makes a first pass over Fox’s back and arms, over his buttocks and the back of his legs, down to his feet, letting the gently spiced oil warm up the muscles under his hands. 

Fox relaxes in degrees as Thorn works with the soft pad of his palm, rubbing half circles outward from either side of Fox’s spine, from the tops of his shoulders down to the small of his back. Slowly, he massages the tension out of the muscles, moving up and down Fox’s body— rolling his thumbs over the thick curve of his thighs, digging in firmly at the swell of his calves, smoothing the flat of his palms across Fox’s ass cheeks before applying pressure with the heels of his palms over the base of his spine and all the way up to his neck.

Fox groans and sighs under the alternating soft and firm pressure, occasionally tilting his body this way or that to indicate his hurts, but largely keeping quiet as he moans softly into the pillow where he rests his head.

“I have two shinies in the medbay,” Fox finally pants when Thorn eases up on the pressure, rubbing more gently with the pads of his fingers as he smooths over Fox’s obliques and outer thighs.

“What happened?”

Fox snorts, answering slowly through Thorn’s ministrations. “Nobody fucking knows— they were out of contact for six hours and we found them dumped in an old maintenance shaft in the lower levels of the Senate Office Building. No helmet cams, no surveillance, no eye witnesses.”

That would certainly have Fox in a mood— not only the damage done to his troops, but also the nigh impossible chance of them coming to harm with no way to discover what had happened. Given the location they were discovered, it stank of possible conspiracy— something that was becoming all the more likely the longer the war went on. With more and more battalions coming back to Coruscant with stories of impossible ambushes, faulty intel, and numbers of enemy troops higher than had ever been reported, some very pointed questions had been raised. 

And that was if the battalions came back at all— otherwise leaving only more terrible rumours in the wake of their absence.

Fox, in particular, would see it as his duty to discover a mole or traitor if their existence was in any way a possibility— their base of operations would most likely have to be on Coruscant, and thus under his purview. Nevermind that sniffing out spies and traitors was a job for Republic Intelligence, and not the Marshal Commander of the Guard.

Applying more oil directly to Fox’s back, Thorn is distracted for a second by the way the golden oil drips down the slope of Fox’s shoulder blades, pooling in the small of his back. It must be the height of irony, he thinks, for him and his massive crush on Fox to constantly wind up in this position, at a time when he’s least able to enjoy it.

Fuck his life, really.

He shakes his head, leaning over Fox’s back again. “That doesn’t explain why everyone is walking around scared of their own shadow, Fox.”

The Marshal Commander sighs deeply and Thorn follows the bow of his back up to his shoulders and neck, focusing on drawing tight circles at the base of Fox’s skull until the man’s head lolls beneath his fingers.

“I just—” he sighs again, shifting on the bed and shoulders tensing again. 

“We all know you care about the troops, Fox,” Thorn says softly, speaking when the other man can’t seem to find the words. “We don’t like seeing you get this way any more than you do but—”

“I know, I  _ know— _ it’s not acceptable,” Fox says, taking the wrong cue from Thorn’s words. “I’m not a cadet who didn’t get his preferred assignment, I know it’s affecting everyone— and then you have to—”

“Because I  _ care _ about you,” Thorn insists, continuing quickly. “We all care about you— it goes both ways!”

A little frustrated, and mad at himself for the slip, Thorn taps at Fox’s shoulder when he doesn’t say anything, nudging him to turn over.

Fox sits up instead, staring at Thorn with an unreadable look on his face. When Thorn tries to push him back down, Fox just catches hold of his wrist, turning Thorn’s hand over between his own.

“I know I don’t make things easy, Thorn,” he says, looking up again. “But I am grateful. I—”

“It’s alright, Fox. I understand,” Thorn cuts him off, curling his fingers around Fox’s, averting his gaze.

“It’s not, though,” he shoots back instantly, tugging at Thorn’s hand until he looks back. “I can’t— I don’t always say the things that I should. And I’m always taking advantage—”

“You are  _ not— _ !” Thorn tries to interrupt again, but Fox just squeezes his fingers, tugging him down to his level.

“What I’m trying to say is that— I care about you too,” he says, pulling Thorn in very close, until he can feel Fox’s breath ghosting over his lips for a moment before Fox closes the little distance left between them with a kiss.

It’s soft, Thorn thinks, tilting his head to deepen the kiss, their bodies only touching at the hands and at the lips. And it’s sweet, Thorn thinks, the brandy on both their tongues tasting like syrup with the combined scent of the candles and incense in the air.

Panting, he pulls back for air, staring into Fox’s eyes—as dark and syrupy as the brandy—before going back for more. Their hands clasp tightly together as Fox pulls him in, closer and closer until he’s pushing back onto the bed and finally laying down, pulling Thorn on top of him.

“We should talk about this,” Thorn says, looking down at Fox with a frenzied kind of urgency buzzing through him. Hearing those words from Fox had been more than he’d ever expected, and the reality of them was almost too good to be true. It made him want Fox to say them again, to tell him he’d heard correctly.

At the same time, he was very aware that he was now inches away from a naked, oiled up Fox who was relaxed and eager to touch him. A naked, oiled up Fox who wanted to keep on kissing him.

“Later?” Fox asks, tugging at the hem of Thorn’s blacks until he pulls the top over his head, allowing Fox to trace his fingers over his tattoos, a memento of every planet he’s visited— like a galaxy map.

“Later,” he agrees, making it a promise in his mind as he leans down again, using the oil still on his hands to smooth over the ridiculous line of Fox’s pectorals and abs and down over his pelvis to where his cock had sprung up to stand at attention.

Fox groans at the contact, hips lifting from the blankets to follow the strokes from Thorn’s hand. Breathing open mouthed, Fox tilts his head to look down the length of their bodies as he tries to loosen the bottom layer of Thorn’s blacks. Quickly giving up and sliding his hand down under the hem to cup at Thorn’s hard cock, Thorn yelps as Fox wraps a hand around his shaft, tugging his cock out of his pants.

He retaliates with a kiss, leaning forward on one arm, biting at Fox’s lips in mock outrage as he secures his position over his legs, bringing their hips closer until their hands bumped together between them.

Breaking the kiss, Fox’s eyes turn again towards where their bodies meet, watching as Thorn wraps his hand around both their cocks, the residual oil on his hand slicking the way as he thrusts against Fox. They both moan at the sensation, hips working erratically as their cocks slide against each other.

With a broken off moan, Fox reaches for the bottle of oil, slicking up his own hand and joining Thorn in stroking their cocks together, their hands bumping and sliding against each other as their thrusts take on a frantic edge. Fox’s free hand grips tight at the arm Thorn has anchored on the bed, digging his heels into the blankets as he tries to thrust up against Thorn’s weight.

Thorn holds steady, tucking his head into the crook of Fox’s neck, holding his breath as their strokes synchronise for one perfect moment. His thighs squeeze down around Fox’s hips as he feels his balls clench, their cocks twitching in the tight cage of their hands as their pleasure peaks. He gasps into Fox’s neck, his ears ringing as they keep going, their come spilling over their fingers, slicking up their cocks even more, and dripping down onto Fox’s abs.

He could have gone on like that forever— the slick heat of their cocks pressed together, Fox’s fingers intertwined with his, his face pressed into Fox’s skin, his heartbeat pounding under Thorn’s ear. They have to let go eventually; their shuddering pleasure finally ebbing away, leaving their skin tingling and hypersensitive, not quite to the edge of pain.

Sated and exhausted, Thorn lowers himself until he’s laying over Fox, splaying an arm across his hip and twitching slightly when their spent cocks are pressed between them. Huffing one of his signature not-laughs, Fox tugs at the tie holding Thorn’s hair out of his face, undoing it and sinking his fingers into the bleached blond lengths, rubbing at his roots where his naturally dark hair had grown out.

“Tch, you’re getting oil in my hair,” Thorn complains, laying boneless against Fox’s chest and otherwise making no move to stop him.

“Worse than that,” Fox huffs again, tugging at a lock of his hair as he points. “The shower’s right there.”

“Right,” he sighs, closing his eyes as Fox goes back to scratching at his scalp and reminding himself that they need to talk— but maybe not right now. “If you didn’t use all my water rations.”

Fox laughs openly at that and he can feel him shaking his head above him as he brings his other arm up across Thorn’s shoulders, keeping him close. 

“You can use mine.”

  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> The smut in here almost didn’t happen. Too many feelings suddenly what the hell.
> 
> Also if you’re going to use oils for massage, make sure they are fit for purpose.
> 
> If you see any errors, let me know 😩
> 
> tumblr: @babzilla


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